Sanibel Island has been a haven for sea-lovers and shell-seekers since times unwritten. Evidence shows that people inhabited Sanibel Island 2,500 years ago, shortly after it became an island, having risen from the sea as a persistent ridge of sand.

The Calusa Indians visited the islands, which were largely ignored by early gold-digging Spanish explorers, for many decades. Anthropologists believe they came, as do modern-day visitors, for R&R and seafood. European-imported disease eventually decimated the Calusa population. The few surviving descendants, who had intermingled with the Seminole tribe, were still here when Cuban fishermen arrived to settle. Mullet fishermen - Cuban and Indian - lived in and worked out of thatched huts, salting fish and roe for shipment to Key West. Legends of pirates Gasparilla and Black Caesar tinted the history pages in shades of blood red and doubloon gold.

Early pioneer settlement on Sanibel concentrated around Point Ybel, where the lighthouse now stands, and at the village of Wulfert, near today's "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge. Island settlers on the island and prosperous cattlemen at Punta Rassa, across the bay, began as early as 1833 to requisition a lighthouse. Fifty years later, the government declared the east end of the island a lighthouse reservation and completed a 104-foot light tower in 1884. A small village of about 100 settlers grew up. As wealthy and intrepid adventurers from the north lands discovered the balmy climes and teeming wildlife around Fort Myers, they made their way to unbridged Sanibel Island for ultimate escape. For many years, from the late 1880s on, Casa Ybel Resort, originally known as "The Sisters," extended hospitality to early travelers.

In 1928, the Kinzie brothers constructed docks at the east end of Sanibel and until 1963, when the causeway opened, "Old Town" served as the hub of island guest activity. Meanwhile, around the Wulfert settlement and on sister Captiva Island, fishermen and farmers coaxed a living off the land and from the sea. During Prohibition, the Cuban smacks stowed more than bait fish in their live wells. Smuggling and stilling became profitable sidelines for some locals.

Famous Americans continued to seek retreat on the island. Charles Lindbergh and his wife, author Anne Morrow Lindbergh, found refuge from the throngs on the islands. Here Anne penned her famous Gifts From the Sea. President Teddy Roosevelt and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay also came to visit.

One of the islands' most influential guests arrived in 1935. Jay Norwood "Ding" Darling, a Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist and noted conservationist, continued to winter on Captiva for years to come. During his stays, he campaigned for federal protection of the islands' fragile wetlands. His efforts resulted in the J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge, which occupies more than half of Sanibel Island. His enduring legacy has bequeathed an attitude of aggressive conservationism, passed along to islanders through the generations.

After the building of the Sanibel Causeway, the islands became a more popular and accessible tourist destination. Tourism took hold, but the island's main function as a wildlife refuge persisted. Sanibel Island, in times modern, became a model for balancing vacation resorts with wildlife habitat, beachers with birds.